February112013

Admiral Horthy may be long gone, but just lately he appears to have become all the rage in modern Hungary. Newspapers sympathetic to the governing Fidesz party continually run glowing editorials about this ‘honourable’ man, along with statues and parks being awarded his name.

Despite their legacy as ‘The Alliance of Young Democrats’, some in the ageing and increasingly authoritarian Fidesz party have found a historical hero who was certainly no democrat. As the 1930s progressed, the electoral franchise was progressively choked off in Hungary, quietly ensuring a succession of increasingly nationalistic and right-wing governments. Areas where the social democrats were strongest were effectively deprived of the vote through bureaucratic manipulation and banning of trades union activity. Meanwhile, in rural areas, landlord control of the franchise was overt. The ‘good old days’ to which many Fidesz supporters refer to, were also the days when Roma were physically segregated into remote slums, invisible but for the occasional presence of the gendarmerie, who would brutally and violently ensure that the locals knew their position at the very base of society.

When a leading Fidesz organizer and friend of the Prime Minister declares in an opinion column that ‘most gypsies are animals’ it is against this historical context. Yet it’s also against the context of a Hungarian Right which has established no clear institutional ethical boundaries against racism, and which has increasingly relied upon nationalist rhetoric in the last 20 years. The ruling party in 1990′s first post-transition government, the MDF (Hungarian Democratic Forum) even included Istvan Csurka among its leaders. Csurka was an overtly anti-Semitic nationalist politician, dedicated to restoring Hungary’s pre-World War One borders. His presence at the centre of post-transition political life indicated the weakness of democratic forces, even at the height of their supposed triumph. Even as Csurka was expelled from the collapsing MDF administration, the government engineered a ceremonial reburial of Admiral Horthy’s bones in his home village of Kenderes.

The Hungarian right’s love of ceremony and pageant – in somewhat embarrassing homage to the anachronisms of the United Kingdom – extended to a huge parade marking the relocation of the Crown to Parliament in 2000 – investing Parliament with ‘holy’ authority. Such mystical references are common currency across the Hungarian right-wing, whether supporters of ‘center-right’ Fidesz or ‘far-right’ Jobbik. It’s part of the deliberately mixed messages being sent by Fidesz. One week the Prime Minister can meet for photo-opportunity with rabbis, the next week, the Fidesz Deputy President can attend a commemoration for a Hungarian Nazi writer. There is always an eye for an opening.

Horthy might be a strange hero to many people inside and outside Hungary, but it’s especially alarming to consider that the same political forces who indulge in Horthy-worship are also the people centralising control of the Hungarian state (especially schools), redrawing a constitution and creating a whole new set of apparently ad-hoc electoral laws, the ultimate effect of which would be to make it very, very hard to elect a new government. Having won a two-thirds majority, Fidesz are attempting to exploit an opportunity to remake the administration of Hungary, as well as cementing their dominance over the future electoral process.

Anyone who remembers the 2002 Election, in which Fidesz attempted to defend its position in office against the Socialists, will remember the partial and disgraceful overt manipulation of public media. Government spokesmen and supporters dominated the programming. The editors of the public broadcasting channels even started broadcasting Fidesz rallies live-to-air – risking the ire of those who were looking to consume the normal diet of soaps and cheap cop dramas. The new electoral law attempted to consolidate this control of public media by preventing commercial radio and television channels from running party political programmes or advertisements during the campaign, leaving only the state-controlled media to provide political analysis. The intention was to drive the opposition off air.

Already we can see the beginnings of the 2014 campaign, with posters plastered on buses and placards around the city, blaming the previous government for Hungary’s problems. It seems much of the funding for this is already coming from state sources. When added to a number of bogus consultations concerning the constitution and the ‘job protection’ campaigns, Fidesz are spending an absolute fortune on communications. The next logical step is to remove the official state budget for political parties, thereby ensuring such massive communications machines are funded from either secretive or ‘grey’ sources. If enacted, it ensures a system that retains the outward trappings of democracy, whilst engaging in multiple instances of manipulation at different levels. The open gerrymandering of electoral districts is, from a UK perspective, more normal, but will further reduce the prospects of change in Hungary, whilst the reallocation of seats has been entirely driven by use of the two-thirds supermajority, with no attempt to garner a consensus.

Finally, and in tune with 1930s Hungary, the new electoral laws proposed a move away from a simple system of voter lists, to a system of voluntary registration. It is here that the government have been placed most under pressure, both internally and externally. Originally, the registration process was intended to involve people presenting themselves physically in a governmental office with the necessary forms of ID. Access to these offices could therefore be made as obscure, or as irregular as necessary, and would be a daunting test of organization and finance, as all parties would need to ferry many of their voters to the offices, or at least ensure as many were registered as possible. The Constitution Court has rejected the electoral laws, indicating dissent in the ranks – but it remains the undeniable case that the party leadership, Viktor Orban himself, wanted to push these changes through.

We could argue that Fidesz, at root, is nothing more than an electoral/communications machine, and in this sense is not so different to many other European political parties nowadays. This machine has even provided an easy cultural identity for Joe Public to adopt, a system of patronage for supporters and friends, plus a flexible and easily adaptable set of policies, which vary from economic liberalism, to nationalism, to oligarchy, depending on the lay of the land.

Yet the rancid nationalism and overt racism of many Fidesz supporters stops it being a question of abstract political science, and illustrates the dilemma that Fidesz has built for itself. For such a machine would obviously not want to risk being thrown out of office –a negative democratic verdict would be too costly to the many interests at stake in such a centralized system of patronage. Yet at the same time, Fidesz retains those same people who were part of the democratic opposition in the communist era, and whose political self-image is based partially upon being democrats in opposition to undemocratic communists. Fidesz need to distance itself from the far-right in some ways, whilst also retaining its nationalist rhetoric and feeding the monster it has helped to create.

By understanding that Fidesz are increasingly being torn in both directions, we can surely begin to appreciate that while the Association of Young Democrats may have a somewhat elastic understanding of the word ‘democracy,’ internal rivalries and dubious decision-making increasingly question the viability of Orban’s all-encompassing governing project. Paradoxically, this coincides with the continued consolidation of absolute power. This should not obfuscate – the prospects for democratic change and political engagement with social realities in Hungary appear singularly bleak, regardless of right-wing factionalism.

January262012

What good might come from Europe’s crisis? Profligate governments in Italy and Greece, while pandering to the masses, have left their countries with crippling debt. This column draws parallels with Latin America and argues that the current hardship may sound a death knell for populism in southern Europe, as it has elsewhere.

December162011

The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, if signed into law, will signal the death knell of our constitutional republic and the formal inception of a legalized police state in the United States. Passed by the House on May 26, 2011 (HR 1540), the Senate version (S. 1867) was passed on Dec. 1, 2011. Now only one man — Barack Obama, a scholar of constitutional law — will make the decision as to whether the Bill of Rights he went to Harvard to study will be superceded by a law that abrogates it.
First, let’s be clear what is at stake. Most critical are Sections 1031 and 1032 of the Act, which authorize detaining U.S. citizens indefinitely without charge or trial if deemed necessary by the president. The bill would allow federal officials to take these steps based on suspicions only, without having to demonstrate to any judicial official that there is solid evidence to justify their actions. No reasonable proof will any longer be required for the government to suspend an American citizen’s constitutional rights. Detentions can follow mere membership, past or present, in “suspect organizations.” Government agents would have unchecked authority to arrest, interrogate, and indefinitely detain law-abiding citizens if accused of potentially posing a threat to “national security.” Further, military personnel anywhere in the world would be authorized to seize U.S. citizens without due process. As Senator Lindsay Graham put it, under this Act the U.S. homeland is considered a “battlefield.”
What is at stake is more than the Constitution itself, as central as that document has been to the American experiment in democracy. What is a stake is nothing short of the basic fundamentals of western jurisprudence. Central to civilized law is the notion that a person cannot be held without a charge and cannot be detained indefinitely without a trial. These principles date back to Greco-Roman times, were developed by English common law beginning in 1215 with the Magna Carta, and were universalized by the Enlightenment in the century before the American Constitution and Bill of Rights were fought for and adopted as the supreme law of the land.
For more than two centuries of constitutional development since then, the United States has been heralded as the light to the world precisely because of the liberties it enshrined in its Declaration of Independence and Constitution as inalienable. It now seems as if the events of 9/11 have been determined to be of such a threatening magnitude that our national leaders feel justified to abrogate in their entirety the very inalienable principles upon which our Republic was founded.
At the heart of this Act is the most fundamental question we must ask ourselves as a free people: is 9/11 worth the Republic? The question screaming at us through this bill is whether the war on terror is a better model around which to shape our destiny than our constitutional liberties. It compels the question of whether we remain an ongoing experiment in democracy, pioneering new frontiers in the name of liberty and justice for all, or have we become a national security state, having financially corrupted and militarized our democracy to such an extent that we define ourselves, as Sparta did, only through the exigencies of war?
Within a week of 9/11, the Use of Military Force Act was approved which authorized the full application of U.S. military power against “terrorism.” A month later, on Oct. 26, 2001, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Patriot Act that began the legislative assault on the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment right to freedom of association was gutted as federal officials were authorized to prosecute citizens for alleged association with “undesirable groups.” The Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure was compromised by permitting indefinite detentions of those suspected of “terrorism.” The Fourteenth Amendment right to privacy was obliterated as unchecked surveillance was authorized to access personal records, financial dealings, and medical records of any citizen at any time without any judicial oversight or permission. Evidence obtained extra-judicially could be withheld from defense attorneys.
The Patriot Act also criminalized “domestic terrorism.” It stated that civil conduct can be considered “domestic terrorism” if such actions aim to “influence by intimidation or coercion” or “intimidate or coerce a civilian population.” Put in plain language, this means that actions such as Occupy Wall Street can be designated as “domestic terrorism” by Federal authorities without judicial oversight and dealt with outside the due process of constitutional protections.
Two weeks after passage of the Patriot Act, on Nov. 13, President Bush issued Military Order No. 1 authorizing the executive branch and the military to capture, kidnap, or otherwise arrest non-citizens anywhere in the world if suspected of engaging in terrorist activities. Proof was not required. It stipulated that trials, if held, would be military tribunals, not civil courts, and that evidence obtained by torture was permissible. No right of appeal was afforded to those convicted. Numerous executive orders, findings, and National and Homeland Security Presidential Directives followed, further consolidating the militarization of due process under the law and enabling the executive branch to act without legal constraint after it has defined a person or group as potentially engaging in “terrorist” activity.
A year later, on Nov. 25, 2002, the Homeland Security Act was passed that for the first time integrated all U.S. intelligence agencies, both domestic and foreign, into a single interactive network under the president. The Act gave these intelligence agencies complete freedom to collect any and all data on anyone anywhere in the United States and, working with allies abroad, to access complete information on anyone anywhere in the world, working closely with local police, intelligence agencies, and the corporate sector. This dissolved the distinctions between domestic and foreign spying and made more ambiguous the distinction between domestic and foreign “terrorism.”
The next major step took place on Oct. 17, 2006, when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act that effectively abrogated habeas corpus for domestic and foreign enemies alike, stating, “Any person is punishable who aides, abets, counsels, commands, or procures” material support for alleged terrorist groups. One of the most basic principles of both our democracy and our civilization, that a person cannot be held without being charged, was surrendered, and done so by substantial majorities in both houses. On the same day, the 2007 NDAA was passed, which amended the 1807 Insurrection Act and 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, prohibiting U.S. military personnel from acting upon U.S. citizens within U.S. borders. Not only was anything allowable in the pursuit of “terrorists,” but the military was authorized to conduct operations inside the homeland in their pursuit.
Now comes the 2012 NDAA, which completes the process and thus serves as the coup de grace for a democratically voted metamorphosis from republic to national security state. It puts the final nail in the coffin of the Constitution by designating the entire United States as essentially the same “battlefield” in the war on terror as Iraq or Afghanistan, and authorizes the executive branch and the military to take whatever actions they consider legitimate against any human being anywhere on planet earth, civilian or enemy combatant, and to do so without any judicial oversight or constitutional constraint. If this Act is passed, the Bill of Rights will no longer protect American citizens from their government. The Constitution will no longer be the ultimate law of the land.
The House and Senate versions of the Act must now be reconciled and the Act sent to the president to either sign or veto. With his decision, he will determine the fate of those very liberties which, up to this point, have been integral to and indeed have defined America.

FOX Business (TV): NDAA -- the National Defense Authorization Act --
may legalize 'murder' of American citizens on US soil by the military
without due process, trial, or attorney. Link:http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1313320586001/

December052011

“[...]

(T)he offending portions are currently worded so vaguely, that any US
citizen can be considered a "terrorist" or an aid to terroristic
activity. Any US citizen who is inconvenient to the US government can
be detained and silenced.

Also, the intent was extremely bad here -- Sens. John McCain, Carl
Levin, and Lindsey Graham INTENDED for this bill to redefine the US
homeland as a "battlefield" (Graham's words, not mine), allowing the
revocation of even our most basic civil rights and access to due
process.

When the intent is bad, an intentionally vague section of the NDAA
can be interpreted by authorities in the worst possible way. The whole
bill must be thrown out, except for key parts to continue military operations and crucial funding of our armed forces.

Let me remind you that this is not a drill. This is
not an inflammatory blogger's post. This actually happened, and with
the Senate's passage of this bill, it is very close to becoming law.
The US mainstream media is not covering this AT ALL,
as I pointed out in a recent column. The only source for even remotely
accurate information right now is on the social networks, especially Twitter -- this reminds me of something you'd experience in Iran or Syria, not in America.

November132011

Profile picture of the 'Egyptian Homosexual Day' Facebook page which reads as "We Do Not Want to Hide."

If Islamists were the ones to appeal as threatening to women and religious minorities in Egypt, then they are not alone when it comes to opposing passing LGBT rights in post-revolution Egypt. Recently, a Facebook page was established to promote the rights of homosexuals and to call on them to gather on the 1 January, 2012, in Tahrir Square to demand their rights.

Hundreds joined the page, not necessarily to support the demands, but to write homophobic comments, murder threats, and to cite Quran verses that show how Islam forbids homosexuality and defines it as a major sin. In one of the pictures posted by the page admin, a comment is written to define the page and to justify the rights of homosexuals to a normal life [ar]:

We are a group of gay Egyptian youth. We were in Tahrir and we took part in the revolution. We see that each of us has the right to have a life of respect in public. We are part of Egypt's revolution and we won't allow anyone to question our loyalty.

In one of its status updates, the page admin posted a message that s/he received from a gay Egyptian man, who was afraid to post it himself after he saw the insults and threats filling the page's wall:

What's the harm if two people from the same sex somewhere in this world are hugging each other? How did I harm you? Did I take something that is yours? Did I eat your food? What? I am a human who feels, loves, hates, gets angry, forgives, and feels happy!

The page admin has also posted a note to media stating the reason behind rejecting interviews:

We apologize to all journalists for not responding to them. We think if media talks about this, there will be a big fuss which might lead to the failure of the national gay day we are planning. It will also make some national personages and intellectuals change their minds about attending the day after giving us their approval. We see it's better if the event gets covered at the time it takes place and we will invite media to be there then.

Another status came as a reply to all the threats that the page had on its wall:

To those who are shocked of how many of us exist in Egypt: we have lived with you for a long time but you forced us to live hiding. Stop you terror attempts; we do not allow you to question our patriotism.

The page has also posted a YouTube video which plays a written message from a gay Egyptian who says that he is just another citizen who contributes to the society and respects all, and expects to be treated the same in his own country.

The comments on this planned day that this Facebook page came out with were not only found on Facebook. Some people started to talk about them on Twitter. Ahmad Abdelhady (@Hadeezz) had an odd opinion on this that he didn't fully explain:

@Hadeezz: In general, I support the rights of homosexuals to get married and be treated equally, but to have a national day out in the street is something I find as a violation of others' freedom. Period, that's all I have got to say.

Activist Mostafa Hussein (@moftasa) condemned the murder threats against homosexuals, but rather in a sarcastic way, as he attempts to put it:

@moftasa: What's the story of those who want to kill the homosexuals? It is as if we need to shed more blood? So when you go to kill a homosexual and he defends himself by killing you, what will we call you? The ‘anus martyr'?

An engineer called Hussain Imam (@kemam) tweeted several posts on the LGBT planned day and suggested in one of them:

بأفكر أعمل جروب لمناهضة المثليين دول بتوع 1 يناير!

@kemam: I think I should start a group against those homosexuals of January 1st.

Another Twitter user (@MiSrBtfHam) called on his followers to report the ‘Egyptian homosexual day' Facebook page to shut it down: